If you'll be my bodyguard,
I'll be your long lost pal,
I can call you Betty,
And Betty when you call me,
You can call me Al ..
I noted twice today the need either for a clone of myself, or an android version of myself. And now having actually typed that, I'm unsure of the need for a second procrastinating layabout who makes more snacks than he writes essay paragraphs. I'd like to be able to just arse about on my newly fixed laptop tomorrow and send my clone/mandroid in my place with the direction "Oy, dickhead. Go write my dissertation."
The uni workload is more trouble than it's worth. Particularly the dissertation, the grief, despair, confusion and anger of which can drive one only to alcohol or whatever mind-numbing distraction is on hand. While working on it in recent weeks, there's been a lot of throwing around of phrases to the tune of "this too shall pass". Inevitably it will, but that hardly makes it more bearable. These are meant to be reassuring words but if you think about it for five minutes, they're still complete crap. It's like saying "c'est la vie" to someone having their arm amputated.
Returning to my earlier point, and still on the subject of limb removal, my laptop has been fixed, thanks mainly to my dad and various anonymous, well informed tech-nerds on the internet. Being without the laptop has been like missing an awesome limb, hence the metaphor, and now I feel like someone who lost their arm as a child and has just had an awesome weapon-arm fitted on the stump. Like the Terminator.
I have an idea for a 5th Terminator film where a final year language student re-programmes a Terminator to know all about counterterrorism in West Germany in the 1970's and sends him back in time to help write his dissertation for him. Except that not only is the dissertation unexciting and difficult, it's also self-aware and trying to take over. An early scene will see the dissertation kill a room full of people just by being so fucking boring, at which point the Terminator (played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt) will burst in and type 2000 words before the dissertation escapes out of a nearby window.
"That dissertation is out there! It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead."
And like all good Terminator films, the final scene will take place in some kind of dark assembly line-factory place, where the student and the Terminator type the final sentence and, with minutes to spare before the hand-in deadline (indicated by a red numbered digital counter), they both hit "save", print the dissertation AND submit it online on time.
Starring Robert Downey Jr. as The Student, Joseph Gordon-Levitt as the Terminator, Liam Neeson as the Students supervisor and Anthony Hopkins as the voice of The Dissertation. Morgan Freeman will narrate and Matt Damon will have a supporting role as The Student's nerdy friend who is killed by The Dissertation somewhere in the first half.
This could actually be a great film.
